Quick whatever before the article starts, this article almost didn't happen, because I was unable to connect my laptop to the hotel Wi-Fi. However, I discovered that my default DNS was set to 127.0.0.1. Don't do that, it won't work. Anyways, on with the article.
One time I had a video blow up on TikTok. It wasn't fun. It was actually really, really bad.
Back then, in around 2021, TikTok had a feature where you could set a few phrases, and if they were used in your DMs, it would automatically reply. You had to have a business account to use this, you could only setup 4 of these per account, and they had to be approved by TikTok staff. I set this up, however, using a business account sucked.
The thing I had this feature setup was a little game where it would ask "what's 9 + 10" and it would say something different depending on how you replied. It was really stupid, and it wasn't worth having a business account, which would be forced to have some features limited. So, I decided to make a video announcing that I was removing this. Usually account announcements stay within your audience. That is not what happened this time.
When I posted this video, I had about 200 followers. I woke up the next morning with 625. Then I hit 2,000, 5,000, 10,000. It didn't stop until i hit 12,500 followers, all because people were trying to use a feature that I announced I was removing.
The most I was able to screenshot was having 20,500 unread direct messages. This permanently ruined any ability for me to able to use the direct message feature ever again. The number I had was overwhelming, and they kept coming in. Even once the video died down, I kept getting Christian chainmail or people spamming me with stickers.
I had a huge following of people who didn't care about the type of videos I was making following me now. And despite having over 10,000 more followers than before, my views per video remained the exact same. However, the worst thing to come out of all of this wasn't related to TikTok, but one single user.
There was one user who became really obsessed with me. Like... really. At first they made a fan page for me. Cool! I have fans. But they didn't stop there. They changed their username on everything to a misspelling of wiichicken, and would always match their profile picture to whatever I was currently using.
On top of this, they found my Discord, and they kept on messaging me, basically praising me. This isn't even me being self deprecating, you have no reason to be meat riding me.
Thankfully, this all ended when the account got suspended, with one of the funniest suspension screens from a major social network:
That's right, it really said 'You account was banned'. I appealed, but was immediately rejected. However, maybe this was for the better. After this, the "stalker" quit messaging me, deleting their Discord account around 2023.
I'm willing to bet that most people's experience with blowing up on TikTok isn't anything like this. But this is just what mine was like. Remember, there are some weird people out there. And also remember that following is basically useless.